Radiation therapy involves medical procedures that selectively expose certain areas of a human body, such as cancerous tumors, to high doses of radiation. The intent of the radiation therapy is to irradiate the targeted biological tissue such that the harmful tissue is destroyed. During a radiation therapy, a radiation source may be rotated around a patient to deliver radiation from different angles at target region inside the patient. The radiation source may be mounted on an arm or a ring gantry. In certain radiation therapy, the patient support supporting the patient may also be moved. Despite careful treatment planning, during a medical procedure, a collision may occur between a moving part of a medical device and a patient. For example, the gantry of the radiation machine and the patient may possibly collide during radiation therapy. As the dose delivery plans become more complex, the combination of a rotating gantry during treatment and couch movement for non-coplanar beams delivery increases the chance of collisions.
While gantry mounted laser systems and room mounted scanners have been used to detect possible collisions, these methods have disadvantages. While a gantry mounted laser system has the ability to detect when a plane defined by laser scanning is intersected by an intruding object, it does not work in many situations where the couch is rotated.
Applicant of the subject application has determined that it may be desirable to develop a new collision avoidance system and method.